HiSilicon Kirin 9000 vs MediaTek MT8188J

HiSilicon Kirin 9000

The HiSilicon Kirin 9000 is an ARM based high-end octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablet, which was introduced with the Huawei P40 Pro. It integrates eight CPU cores in three clusters. A single high performance ARM Cortex-A77 cores with up to 3.13 GHz for fast single core performance. Three more performance cores (same Cortex-A77 architecture) with up to 2.54 GHz and four efficiency cores based on the ARM Cortex-A55 architecture with up to 2.05 GHz. All 8 cores can be used at once (big.LITTLE).

The integrated graphics card is using the Mali-G78 architecture and features all 24 cores (G78MP24).

For AI acceleration (NPU), the Kirin 9000 integrates the Da Vinci Architecture 2.0 (2 * Ascend Lite and 1 * Ascend Tiny). Huawei specifies 8 MB of system cache (most likely shared for CPU, GPU and AI) and can access LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 main memory. The integrated 5G modem supports SA&NSA, Sub-6G and mmWave. WiFi 6 including VHT160 and Bluetooth 5.2 are also integrated in the chip.

The CPU performance is in the top tier of mobile SoCs of 2020 and slightly above the Snapdragon 865+ and on a level with the older Apple A13 Bionic SoC.

The Kirin 9000 is produced at TSMC in the modern 5nm process.

MediaTek MT8188J

The MediaTek MT8188J is a mid-range ARM SoC (System-on-a-Chip) introduced in the first quarter of 2023, primarily used in Android-based tablets. It is manufactured using a 12-nanometer process and features a total of eight CPU cores (Octa-Core). These consist of two fast Cortex-A78 cores and 6 Cortex-A55 cores that work together in a big.LITTLE configuration.

The A78 cores of the MediaTek MT8188J can clock at speeds of up to 2.2 GHz, while the A55 cores can reach speeds of up to 2 GHz (going down to 500 MHz). For graphics processing, it employs an ARM Mali-G57 MP2 GPU. Additionally, it includes a video decoder with support for H.264 and H.265.

In addition to the CPU and GPU, the chip integrates an LPDDR4 memory controller, capable of supporting up to 8 GB of RAM. The SoC also includes a modem for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and LTE up to Cat.7.